Baldur’s Gate II Review

Hauling around a heavy backpack crammed with a Player’s Handbook, Dungeon Master’s Guide, dice bag, pewter miniatures, and other tools of the tabletop RPG trade can be exhausting. Luckily, Dungeons & Dragons action is more portable than ever thanks to the iPad re-releases of BioWare’s celebrated Baldur’s Gate games, and 2000’s Baldur’s Gate II is the latest to make the leap. This return romp through the Forgotten Realms definitely recaptures the magic of playing AD&D 2nd Edition long ago, but the old-school design doesn't make a perfectly smooth transition to iPad.

At its core, Baldur's Gate II remains a pretty compelling quest. Gathering your party of adventurers, escaping imprisonment, and setting out into the danger-filled realm to slay monsters and boost your might is as engaging as ever. That's largely due to great storytelling via branching dialogue options — which can change the direction of the tale — and the interesting personalities of the characters themselves. Amassing experience, leveling up your group, and equipping everyone with great gear and magic proves absorbing, as well.

Accessibility and ease-of-use are not Baldur's Gate II's strong suits, however, and they're problematic enough to be deal-breakers for less-patient players. You're thrown right into the deep end without any of the integrated tutorials you'd expect from more modern RPG fare. How do you control your party both as individuals and as a group? How about an explanation of the game's dense, nitty-gritty elements, like spells and character classes? It's all buried in a “How to Play” tab that's easy to miss, and it’s frustrating to muddle through the game without that deep dive beforehand.

We also have no love for the clunky interface, which stacks a ton of menu buttons with vague symbols on them. Deciphering what each one does feels like a puzzle in itself. The touch controls are challenging to work with and unintuitive too. For example, we accidentally directed our entire party to attack and kill of one of our characters just by a simple mis-tap in a bustling combat encounter. We had no clue what was going on until we zoomed in closer and saw that our crew had betrayed and slaughtered one of its own. Whoops. Reload.

Overcome these irritating antiquities in game design, and you'll still find that there's a lot of charm and depth in Baldur's Gate's expansive adventure. The iPad edition packs in several expansions from the original PC release, along with online multiplayer and an entertaining battle arena mode — plus newly added (but optional) in-app purchases that let you add special characters to your crew.

The bottom line. Baldur's Gate II is a great slice of RPG gaming history, though it’s geared towards serious fans of old-school role-playing — and the tricky touch interface, punishing difficulty, and unintuitive design elements tend to get in the way of fun at times.